1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic zooming apparatus. More specifically, the present invention relates to an electronic zooming apparatus which is applied to a digital camera and generates zoomed image data according to an instructed zooming magnification.
2. Description of the Related Art
In an example of such a kind of conventional electronic zooming apparatus, pixel data read from a memory is subjected to zooming processing by a zooming interpolation circuit (zooming processing circuit), and the zoomed image data is converted into an NTSC composite signal, for example, by a video encoder, and then, the NTSC composite signal is displayed on an LCD display.
In the related art, since the pixel data read from the memory is directly applied to the zooming processing circuit, a smooth continuous zooming is possible while degradation of picture quality may occur when a large magnification zooming is performed.
For example, as shown in FIG. 1, in a case of 2 times (×2) zooming, a pixel 21a is produced from pixels 1, 2 of a memory (“original pixel”), and a pixel 22a is produced from original pixels 3, 4, . . . and the same is applied onward. In a case of 3 times (×3) zooming, a pixel 31a is produced from the original pixels 1, 2, a pixel 32a is produced from the original pixels 4, 5, . . . and the same is applied onward. However, in the case of 3 times zooming, there are some pixels on which the original pixels are not reflected out of the pixels after the zooming processing. That is, the original pixels 3, 6, . . . are missed. Accordingly, at a time of 3 times or larger magnification zooming, degradation of picure quality occurs.